My initial idea with this doc was to make an expository documentary. Record my friends doing something, and then provide some voice over afterwards about what was going on. The problem with making a doc in the expository mode is that you need to have a point you’re trying to make. What I ended up capturing didn’t really have a moral to the story, it was just recording the process of going to the theater and buying some movie tickets. Once I had the footage, I realized that the observational mode fit the material that I had better, so I edited accordingly. There were some moments when I was talking that I cut out to really bring the observational aspects of a documentary front and center. The main thing that I regret not capturing was the theater employee who told us that if we were paying with a card, we could go over and use the kiosk. It would have been nice to have a clearer transition from waiting in line to walking over and using the kiosk.

While it’s not quite Grey Gardens, I believe that this mini documentary does the job in demonstrating the observational mode of documentary filmmaking. Despite the fact that I was filming friends, they did a good job at allowing me to just be an observer for a few minutes, and not interact with me too much. In this case, I wasn’t trying to rhetorically say anything, I was just there to observe the process of what goes into buy tickets. It was a purely objective viewing of a gaggle of college students going to the movies, there wasn’t any subjective aspect to the film. The first-hand elements of observation were all there.